Last week's diary featured two songs: this one by Peter, Paul and Mary…
… and this one by Holly Near:
Welcome once again to Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up, a weekly opportunity to have a little fun and to get your brain in gear for the regular Sunday Puzzle (which posts Sunday evenings at 8 pm Eastern time).
I'm away until September 13th, harvesting blueberries in Maine, but I've queued up a series of Sunday Puzzle Warm-Up diaries to entertain you until I return.
NOTE: This diary was supposed to post on September 5th, while I was away for blueberry season, but the gremlins removed it from the queue in order to post one of their puzzles. (They claim I gave them permission to do this 5 months from now.)
I've re-queued the diary to post tonight instead, which actually works out well because I need to be away again this weekend.
I told the gremlins they need to apologize for tampering with the diary queue during my absence. They promised to do so, and I had thought I'd be able to include that in tonight's diary. But now they say they want to wait until next week, so it can run in a diary when I'm not absent. So instead of providing their apology to run in tonight's diary, they provided a puzzle. Look for their apology next week...
The theme for these diaries is
Summer Songfest. These diaries spotlight a noteworthy song in the puzzle and include a YouTube clip of the song featured in the previous week's puzzle.
Except last week's diary featured two songs (one from me and one from the gremlins), and that's the case again tonight. There are clips of last week's songs at the top of this diary; and you can find out what tonight's two songs are by solving tonight's two puzzles...
ADDITIONAL NOTE: The subtitle of tonight's diary ("It's About Time") was provided by the gremlins and relates to their puzzle. Neither the diary title nor the gremlin puzzle have any connection to my Summer Songfest puzzle (so please don't waste time looking for one).
The gremlins tell me that their puzzle relates to their apology (for meddling with the diary queue during my absence), which they say they'll give to me in time to include in next week's diary.
First up, the answers to last week's puzzles:
The clues were:
1. address / 2. safety / 3. relief
4. campaign / 5. without further / 6. Tobacco
7. Op / 8. to Joy / 9. off into the sunset
10. did you miss? / 11. have we before? / 12. bomb
13. Franken / 14. Jordan / 15. physician thyself
16. radio / 17. West / 18. red
19. ho ho / 20. Blount / 21. McClure
22. parking / 23. violence / 24. proper
25. a T / 26. meal / 27. people
28. Milne / 29. I rock / 30. Cass
31. Louis / 32. the table / 33. of Eden
34. what is? / 35. Broadway / 36. drop a
The answers were:
IP N pin A pain
ad O ado R Road
Ed O Ode R rode
me T met I time
Al H Hal E heal
AM E Mae T meat
Yo R Roy T Troy
no N non- U noun
to A oat B boat
AA M am a M Mama
St. E set A East
it H hit N hint
The verticals read
NOOTHERNNAMEH ARRIETTUBMAN -- which, properly spaced out, spells the song titles "No Other Name" and "Harriet Tubman". (When it comes to the question of whose picture should appear on the $20 bill, the gremlins insist there's no other name in the running.)
Next up, here's the gremlins' puzzle:
1. what comes after Limbaugh's b
2. Peter, Paul or Mary
3. Your health, sir! (with "love")
4. comma trix
5. horny creatures
6. what you might say to a welcome guest
HINT: one of the answers is a 2-word phrase
Hoo! That looks challenging! (I think the gremlins must be playing by the Sunday night rules, in which they're allowed to work mischief with capitalization, punctuation, etc., rather than the Saturday night rules, when clues are supposed to be straightforward and non-deceptive.)
Sorry I won't be here tonight to help with the solving on this one, but if it doesn't get solved tonight it might make a good side dish for next week's potluck.
Lastly, here's tonight's regular warm-up puzzle. This puzzle has 8 rows, with 3 answers per row.
IMPORTANT NOTE! Every clue in this puzzle is a familiar phrase, name, or hyphenated word from which one word is missing. The missing word is the answer to the clue.
If, for example, the clue reads free, some possible answers would be will [free will], trade [free trade], scot [scot free], and duty [duty-free].
If you're familiar with how JulieCrostics work, you can jump right in; if you're new and don't yet know how JulieCrostics work, you can find complete instructions in the bottom part of the diary.
(Also if you're new, a request: please don't post any answers or other spoilers in comment subject lines. Instead, please put any guesses at possible answers into the comment itself. Thanks!)
Okay, I think that covers the basics. Here are the clues. Have fun!
1. iron
2. throat
3. gods
4. seventh
5. some day
6. hangman's
7. John
8. Teapot scandal
9. the lawn
10. school
11. mother
12. well machine
13. bargain
14. ties that
15. legally
16. skeleton
17. Danny
18. roof
19. far away
20. Kaufman
21. Yankee Doodle
22. Franklin
23. dry
24. Daniel
instructions for solving JulieCrostics
In JulieCrostics you are given a set of clues, such as these:
To solve the puzzle, figure out the answers to the clues and enter them into a grid of rows and columns, like so:
All the rows in the grid will be the same length (i.e. have the same number of answers). All the answers in a column will be the same length (i.e. have the same number of letters). And the words in each column are one letter longer than the words in the column to its left. That's because each word in a row has all the letters of the word before it plus one new letter.
For instance, if the clues for a row were
1. say what's not so
2. resting
3. concede
then the answers might be LIE, IDLE (= LIE + D), and YIELD (= IDLE + Y)
Write the added letter in the space between the word which doesn't have it and the word which does. For the row in the example you'd write:
1. LIE D 2. IDLE Y 3. YIELD
When you have solved all the clues and written down all the added letters, the added letters will form columns that spell out a message of some sort. It might be a person's name, it might be the title of a book, it might be a familiar phrase, or it might be a series of related words. Your challenge is to solve all the clues, fill in the vertical columns, and figure out what the vertical columns mean.
In the example given, the verticals read DAIL YKOS. With proper spacing and capitalization that spells out Daily Kos!